On 9/1/05, Dutch banking giant ABN AMRO awarded a major five-year IT outsourcing contract to five vendors, headed by IBM. Three Indian technology companies, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Patni Computers, will provide application support and some development.
The deal is part of ABN Amro's efficiency program announced last December.
According to Edward Taylor's 9/1/05 The Wall Street Journal article, 1,800 ABN jobs will be transferred to IBM and 200 jobs will move to TCS, with another 1,500 full-time information-technology jobs being eliminated. The bank will retain 1,800 information-technology jobs, performing "strategic functions such as testing new software applications on legacy systems," as well as handling sensitive security-related issues.
According to Eric Bellman's WSJ article the next day, the deal is significant because, until now, Indian software companies have dealt predominantly with US-based clients with "less than 25% of revenue at both Infosys and Tata Consultancy [coming] from Europe."
References:
ABN Amro press release.
http://www.abnamro.com/pressroom/releases/2005/2005-09-01-en.jsp
TCS press release.
http://www.tata.com/tcs/media/20050902.htm
Patni Computers press release.
http://www.patni.com/newsroom/press-release/2005/ABN-AMRO-Win.pdf
Infosys press release.
http://www.infosys.com/media/press_releases/five-year-global-it-deal-abn-amro.asp
"ABN Amro Signs Outsourcing Deal," WSJ, 9/1/05
"Indian Outsourcing Scores a Milestone," WSJ, 9/2/05
Asian Age coverage.
http://www.asianage.com/main.asp?RF=DefaultMain&layout=2&cat1=7&cat2=50&newsid=178107
